I tried a lot but couldn’t think of a better start to this article than John F. Kennedy’s remarks in front of the UN General Assembly on Sep 25, 1961:
“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable.
Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”
It was true that day and it is true today.
As the conflict in Ukraine keeps on intensifying with the probability of two biggest nuclear powers confronting each other ever-increasing, the scientists who are concerned with atomic science are on the ball.
Almost a week ago, “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight the clock has been since it was established in 1947 to illustrate global existential threats at the dawn of the nuclear weapons age,” reported The Guardian.
In layman’s terms, the world is closer to total destruction than it has been at any point in the history.
Apart from the fact that we might end up in the radioactive ashes, another thing that’s even more depressing is the public’s attitude toward the possibility of an all-out nuclear war.
When you talk about this subject on social media, the most probable responses you are going to get will make question the intelligence of the human race. People are literally acting like nuclear war is something that can happen only in the movies or it’s something that we can only imagine about without having to face it actually. They seem to have forgotten that we are living in a world where countries are collectively sitting upon thousands of nuclear warheads and every country is heavily dosed with the drugs of nationalism.
“You are needlessly fearmongering over the nuclear war. It has never happened and it will never happen because every country knows it would bring their destruction too.”
If there’s one thing that can possibly be learnt from the previous Cold War, it’s that nuclear war won’t necessarily come out of a commander in chief giving order to the army to launch the nukes; it will most probably be a result of miscommunication, misinterpretation, miscalculation, or malfunction, as it could have happened during the 1960s.
At the height of Cuban Missile Crisis, fate of the humanity was in the hands of one Soviet soldier. Let me emphasize this: IF ONE SOVIET SOLDIER WAS NOT CALM-HEADED THAT DAY, WE WOULD NOT BE SITTING HERE.
Not to mention the numerous other close calls which could have closed the door for future generations if we didn’t balance ourselves at the right time.
In an interview, a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility named Steven Starr briefly explained how the nuclear war can start out of miscalculation:
“If the US early warning systems detect a missile launch, the President can order a launch of retaliatory nuclear strike before incoming nuclear warheads take out communication systems and weapons. Of course, if this is a false warning of attack, then the “retaliatory” strike becomes a first-strike and a nuclear war has started.”
Saying that nuclear war won’t happen even if we continue to escalate because it has never happened before is the dumbest thing one possibly say looking at the current state of the world.
Then comes the people who consider the possibility of a nuclear war, but instead of working to oppose it, they are busy pointing fingers.
“If nuclear war breaks out, it will be because of Russia.”
They at least acknowledge that nuclear war is a possibility, but their acknowledgement serves no purpose as they continue to support every escalatory policy rolled out by the US empire to incentivize Russia to attack.
Would it seriously matter who fired the first nuke when the world is burning, and everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs? Would you literally take pride in saying “I told you it would be started by Russia” when you are hugging your loved ones for the last time?
When two countries point their nuclear warheads toward each other, it wouldn’t matter who made the first move, because nuclear war is not about fighting with stones, so that when it ends you can tell whose fault it was. You will not find yourself staring at the mushroom clouds and calling your friends to tell them that your prediction was right. There will not be war tribunals, or the pundits on TV in both countries blaming each other for the destruction.
Nobody will be there to ask you which side you supported, or which side was right or wrong. Nobody will be there to listen to your ideological babblings. You will not be there giving interviews to TV channels and telling the audiences how your sharp mind was right about Russia being the first mover.
When the nuclear war starts, it will not end with one side being the winner - as it’s the case with conventional wars. It will end when the human civilization itself ends.
Only the air-headed war sluts would think that it’s intelligent to pick sides in a nuclear war.
Then comes the people who somewhat agree that the game of nuclear chicken is a quite risky one, but their concern is:
“If we negotiate with Putin, then other dictators will be encouraged to get everything they want by threatening the world about a nuclear nightmare.”
This line of thinking completely ignores what negotiation or detente means. They frame detente as something in which one side gets everything it wants while the other side has to back down with empty hands. Little do they know that detente is not appeasing or bowing down.
It’s one of the intelligent things that countries can do in a nuclear world. Detente means both warring parties sitting at the negotiation table and try to find out the least violent or peaceful end to the war with both sides making some sacrifices or signing an armistice.
In fact, that’s how the Cuban Missile Crisis was ended.
If people understood what the consequences of nuclear war will be, not even a single person from the rank-and-file public would be celebrating these escalations. That’s a fact. Many people just can’t imagine almost every species dying horribly in front of our eyes (including ourselves); that’s inconceivable for the ego that wants to live under illusions.
Therefore, people throw out obnoxious and absurd logics to justify their flattery for the most violent and powerful empire in the human history.
In another interview, Los Alamos Study Group secretary and executive director Greg Mello shared some insights regarding the nuclear threat:
“To a first approximation, in a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die. Some people in the southern hemisphere might survive, but probably not even them.
…
The imagination cannot encompass nuclear war. Nuclear war means nuclear winter. It means the collapse of very fragile electronic, financial, governmental, administrative systems that keep everyone alive. We’d be lucky to reboot in the early 19th century. And if enough weapons are detonated, the collapse of the Earth’s ozone layer would mean that every form of life that has eyes could be blinded. The combined effects of a US-Russian nuclear war would mean that pretty much every terrestrial mammal, and many plants, would become extinct. There would be a dramatic biological thinning.”
I am not asking you to side with Russia or anything like that - for siding with anyone means assured destruction of everyone.
Still if you want to take sides, why not side with humanity? Why not side with millions of other species living with us? Why not side with the beauty of this planet? Why not side with the future generations? Why not side with sanity?
If we fail to prevent the single worst thing that can happen with humanity and other species today, then we would fail as species too. We would be ashamed to look into the eyes of the children who would see the nuclear warheads flying over their heads and ask us with innocence in their voice, “Are we going to die now?”.
Preventing the nuclear confrontation must be the top concern of every media publication and every newsroom, but that’s not how it is. Everyone is acting like nuclear war is a joke and ignoring like it’s not an issue.
“Mankind must put an end to war--or war will put an end to mankind.”
- John F. Kennedy (Sep 25, 1961)
The previous mass extinction that our planet witnessed was 60-65 million years ago when the asteroid hit the Earth and wiped out almost 75% of the species, most famously the dinosaurs. No species at that time had the choice to protect themselves from going extinct. They had to go against their will.
But today we have a choice. We can prevent the sixth mass extinction from taking place by opposing the nuclear brinkmanship at every step. We can change the course of our trajectory if we want. It’s in our hands. All we have to do is to get out of our narrow ideological thinking, think broadly and pressure the psychopaths to get over their urge to control and dominate the world forever.
We can either go the way of dinosaurs, or we can flourish by correcting our past mistakes.
The choice is ours.
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"Siding with anyone means assured destruction for everyone", such a truth about nuclear war. Why is it not obvious to everyone? Thanks for your writing, just found it today.